Catalogue name: Barbara Baker
Forum name: barbara2
https://librivox.org/recollections-of-the-revolution-and-the-empire-by-henriette-lucie-dillon-marquise-de-la-tour-du-pin-gouvernet/
Dear Barbara Baker,
Thank you so much for your beautiful and enchanting reading of Recollections of the Revolution and the Empire.
I am not entirely sure how i found these recordings (Napoleon and Wikipedia must have been involved) but i was immediately smitten by the combination of Madame Gouvernet's and your voice.
During these exceptional social distancing times you have kept me company almost daily, often during breakfast.
Listening to you was a real treat.
Your voice, almost effortlessly, enriched my days with a myriad of new acquaintances -Henriette Lucie Dillon herself, her family, servants, friends and foes- and their experiences and struggles, including a lockdown in yellow-fever-stricken New York, a quarantine in the port of Cadiz, and a visit to the city of Antwerp, my home.
I have since tried a few other librivox recordings, including some in Dutch, but it pains me to admit none of them have already convinced me to stay with them for hours as you did. The combination of your pace, empathy, timbre and diction is, in my opinion, exceptional and exceptionally masterful.
I will start my job as a teacher again tomorrow, and since my students are obliged to wear a mask i decided to limit my own speaking somewhat by recording in advance multiple-choice questions. I would normally read them aloud for my students are adults with often limited reading skills for whom Dutch is a second language. They are preparing for a theory exam to obtain a driver license. I have tried to put some Barbara Baker in these recordings and beneficially so for them, i believe.
So i thank you -i can not express how much- for the librivox recordings (Piozzi is next, i think) but also for the exemplary inspiration.
It makes me happy to see you are assigned to some new libivox projects and i wish you well.
Thank you for bearing with my idiosyncratic and probably misspelled English,
With great admiration,
Jo
Antwerp, Belgium